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dpb

wrote:
....
Wind is the more interesting. That one is always put forward by the
environmentalists as a great solution. Yet, when it comes down to
actually building them, the usual environmental extremists shoot many
of them down.

The problem w/ wind is still one of inconsistency. I've posted before
results of a sizable wind farm in W KS (Gray County) which in seven
years operation has overall average of 50% installed capacity w/ months
(mid-summer and -winter) where monthly average is only 20%. Thus would
take as much as 5X installed capacity to have a chance of producing the
required power as installed on that long an averaging scale. It's worse
as the time scale is shortened, of course, including the problem that
the wind typically also goes down at night after losing solar heating.
These data are available from EIA site for a farm in the prime area for
wind generation in the US. Again, it's a piece but it's no panacea as
many proponents who don't worry about the realities of making their
wishes true would like to think (or probably more correctly, make others
think).

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